January 29, 2009--Missiles Fired From Gaza, Israel Responds- Election Ads
Palestinians fired two missiles at Israel today. Israel responded by killing one of those responsible a few hours later. There is a disagreement within the defense establishment whether these are the last bumps on the way to an agreement or whether Hamas needs to receive another serious blow before it realizes that change is necessary. With Senator Mitchell in Israel at the moment, now is not the time for significant action.
The Israeli news was dominated today by the news that a Spanish court had indicted top Israeli defense officials, from the Chief-of-Staff on down, for the 2002 killing of Salah Shehadeh. Shehadeh was the founder of the military wing of Hamas and was directly and indirectly responsible for the bus bombings that were taking place at the time. Shehadeh's assassination caused the death of the rest of his family. The indictment came as a complete surprise to those indicted.
I had the pleasure of watching an hours worth of political commercials today. The ads by the smaller parties were quite humorous. The direct attack ads are between Kadima and Likud. Likud ran an ad similar to those run by McCain against Obama. Likud quoted the nasty things that were said against Livni prior to the Kadima primaries by Shaul Mofaz. I must say that they used the most unflattering pictures of Livni that are imaginable. All the Likud ads end with a picture of Livni and a line that says the job is too big for her. Kadima ran a very good ad that described everything that Livni has done and stated if she was a man there would be no question that she would be qualified. Polling shows that Livni does very well among women, but male Israelis seem very reluctant to vote for a woman.
